http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
TO get a sense of the magnitude of Sidney Blumenthal's
humiliation at the hands of Matt Drudge and his puckish
counsel, Manny Klausner, you
have to remember how most of
the deep thinkers had
immediately left Drudge for
dead. The Blumenthals
unleashed their righteous
indignation from the lofty
reaches of their White House offices, launching subpoenas
with gay abandon, threatening Drudge and his friends with
quick and violent decimation. They picked their lawyer
carefully, a pompous bully named McDaniel, once of the
great Williams & Connelly juggernaut in Washington, now
relocated a few miles away in Baltimore. Their public posture
and their private threats suggested a confidence verging on
certainty, and when their intended victims asked for common
decency or normal good faith, they responded with the backs
of their hands.

When my wife Barbara and I were summoned to testify, we
asked that the session be open to the press (the alleged
object of Blumenthal's concern). No way. We asked if a pool
reporter could attend. Forget it. How about our children?
Nyet.

Once in reach of their preposterous questions, we were
asked to identify any and all members of the press (the
alleged object of Blumenthal's concern) with whom we had
discussed the Sidney matter. Virtually all of them were
subsequently subpoenaed for interrogation. It was a farcical
replay of Sidney's cameo appearance on the steps of
Kenneth Starr's courthouse, when he lied to the assembled
journalists, accusing Starr's prosecutors of asking him about
his contacts with the press (then, as always, the alleged
object of Blumenthal's concern).

The suit against Drudge was never about "damage" to the
Blumenthals' reputation; the accusation that Sidney beat his
wife was quickly withdrawn, accompanied by a full apology
(a lot better than most public figures get under like
circumstances). The Blumenthal/Drudge skirmish was part of
the Clinton campaign to intimidate administration critics by
any and all means. It goes under the name of the politics of
personal destruction.

Loser

That Blumenthal despised the very idea of a free press was
clear from the outset, and became clearer still as the case
dragged on. When we had the audacity to post our
depositions on the Internet, Blumenthal was outraged, and
demanded that the judge put a stop to such outrageous
behavior. Imagine! Someone had the gall to actually provide
the public with something they had every right to know.

In addition to trying to frighten the opponents of his
administration, Blumenthal had other, more esoteric
objectives. Along with Hillary Clinton, Sidney seems to be
one of the handful of true believers who actually embraced
the notion of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and he no
doubt hoped that he would be able to document its wicked
ways once he got its chief practitioners on the witness stand,
all sworn to tell the truth. Thus, the repeated questions about
people with whom we spoke. Thus, the widening circle of
subpoenas. Even as he fades away in the direction of a softly
padded room, Sidney insists he was done in by a conspiracy:
There were just too many people prepared to finance
Drudge's defense.

Sidney's bad joke has now ended, and we will now have to
wait for his White House memoirs to see his manic vision in
full detail. Not to worry, we can bear the delay. For now, we
can revel in the refreshing spectacle of the full exposure of yet
another factotum of the Clinton era. The ill-considered
pardons punctured Bill's balloon; Sidney's retreat collapsed
his.

But that is not the end of the story, for we must still deal with
the alleged object of Blumenthal's concern: the press.
Precious few journalists had the stomach to write the obvious
truth about this sorry matter, and some very illustrious
defenders of the press (Floyd Abrams, to name one)
proclaimed the suit a noble cause, and Drudge a worthy
target. That is no small matter, because it shows once again
that a large part of the press is so thoroughly politicized (or, if
you prefer, intimidated), that suppression of the truth is
accepted as an ordinary occurrence.

So let us toast two unconventional, and precious characters:
Matt Drudge and Manny Klausner. Unwilling to be cowed,
patient to a fault, full of good grace and good humor, they live
to fight another day. For which we are most
grateful.